engleski

Legal Position of Minority Churches in Croatia: Enforcement of Morality

The most controversional dimension of enforcement of morality is religiously inspired regulation of abortion. Hence the central question "Who is, or ought to be reconized as a human being, i.e. a person and legal subject endowed with certain rights, most notably the rights to life, health and privacy?". Since the Croatian law does not answer the question, it is appropriate to turn to extra-legal sources. A prima facie candidate is science. However, science cannot tell whether the presence of life in a biological sense amounts to the existence of a human being or person. In addition, science is underdetermined by facts and dependent on transempirical presuppositions that are at times recognized as value-laden. Since a vast majority of Croatian inhabitants are Catholics, it may seem natural that the Catholic Church's answer to the central question should have a gfreat or even decisive weight. However, under the Croatian Constitution, standards of religion or belief cannot be binding as such within the Croatian legal system, for two reasons: the neutrality of the Croatian Constitution towards religion or belief, including materialist conceptions ; and constitutional protection of the minority from the majority in matters of religion and belief. As the foregoing analysis shows, the Catholic Church or antother religious community in Croatia may enforce its morality, including its moral standards on abortion, only by secularizing it, namely, by sponsoring legislation that implements public rather than religious morality. If public opinion can support a pro-choice law there is no apparent reason why it could nt support a pro-life law. At the same time, historical experience argues strongly against the misuse of political authority backed by organized religion. This is why the application of principles explicatged in this paper is an ongoing process of adjustment of highly conflicting interests, which results at best in periodic compromises that satisfy no one but may nonetheless reduce the mumber of collateral casualties.

church and state, minor religious communities, enforcement of morality

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